What was occuring in 1888?

[DirectorDave]

In Braunau am Inn, Austria, Alois and Klara were getting jiggy with it and they conceived a child.




The Bishop of Rome was Pope Leo XIII who had been in post for 10 years, he would hold it another 15 years until his death at 93 in 1903.







The Blue Riband for the fastest ship was held by RMS Etruria, the record set was 19.56 knots on a 6-day, 2-hour run from Queenstown to Sandy Hook arriving on the 2nd June 1888.







Heavyweight Champ by popular acclaim was the American John L. Sullivan the "Boston Strong Boy". On the 5th of January Sullivan fought his one and only fight in the UK winning by TKO3 against William Samuells at the Philharmonic Hall, Cardiff.


John L. Sullivan

[Abby Normal]

So what?

Graham

It means alot to me.

[DJA]

The 1888 "photo" was actually taken by William Henry Pickering.

[Sam Flynn]

The first photograph of the Horsehead Nebula in Orion was taken in 1888, by a Scottish astronomer named Williamina Fleming, a remarkable woman in many ways.



In case you're wondering, the 1888 photo is on the left, with a modern colour image alongside for comparison.

[Graham]

November 27 – The sorority Delta Delta Delta is founded at Boston University.

So what?

Graham

[Abby Normal]

November 27 – The sorority Delta Delta Delta is founded at Boston University.

[Graham]

The premiere of what in my opinion is the best of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, The Yeomen Of The Guard. Sadly the works of G&S are largely forgotten these days...I spent years of my life memorising and rehearsing them.

Also mustn't forget the 'Match Girls Strike', and Annie Besant, the campaigning journalist who first brought to public notice the conditions in match factories. She should have been sainted IMHO.

The Eastman-Kodak camera patented.

Birth of aircraft pioneers and designers Thomas Sopwith and Ernst Heinkel. Those names would echo loudly in later years.

Graham

[Herlock Sholmes]

England beat the Aussies 2-1 in a test series.

Sorry GUT

[richardh]

"Van Gogh cuts off his ear" And we all know why now, don't we?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKsF_Zilp8U&t=3s

The first wax straw (for drinking) was patented

Hail storm in India kills about 250 (now I'm not sure but there may have been two similar events I think, seeing almost 500 dead)

Van Gogh cuts off his ear

California gets its first seismograph

Bundy clock patented (how many were tied to them at work)

Edison patents what was in reality the first movie machine

Pneumatic tyre patented by John Dunlop


Burroughs patented his adding machine

[Busy Beaver]

What was happening on a more local level in 1888 London, to bring out a serial killer that was never going to be caught and whose trade name was still going to be uttered 130 years in the future? Do serial killers or potential serial killers just get up one morning and decide that they are gong to kill and see how far they can get before they get caught? Is there something that triggers them?

[drstrange169]

What a great story, Joshua. I've never about it before.

[Joshua Rogan]

There was a lot of political stuff going on at the time, but don't forget the great Oxfordshire Sheep Panic;

The details of the sheep-panic of Nov. 3, 1888, are extraordinary. The region affected was much greater than was supposed by the writer whom we quoted in an earlier chapter. It is said in another account in Symons’ Meteorological Magazine, that, in a tract of land twenty-five miles long and eight miles wide, thousands of sheep had, by a simultaneous impulse, burst from their bounds; and had been found the next morning, widely scattered, some of them still panting with terror under hedges, and many crowded into corners of fields. See London Times, Nov. 20, 1888. An idea of the great number of flocks affected is given by one correspondent who says that malicious mischief was out of the question, because a thousand men could not have frightened and released all these sheep. Someone else tries to explain that, given an alarm in one flock, it might spread to the others. But all the sheep so burst from their folds at about eight o’clock in the evening, and one supposes that many folds were far from contiguous, and one thinks of such contagion requiring considerable time to spread over 200 square miles. Something of an alarming nature and of a pronounced degree occurred somewhere near Reading, Berkshire, upon this evening. Also there seems to be something of special localization: the next year another panic occurred in Berkshire not far from Reading (Fort, 1941, p489-490).

[Mayerling]

The 1888 US Presidential election is traditionally said to have been decided by something called the Murchison Letter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_letter

Essentially, it was a fabricated letter, purporting to prove that the British government would prefer for Grover Cleveland to win the election over Benjamin Harrison. It was published in American newspapers two weeks before the election. The British preference for Cleveland was in fact probably true: Grover Cleveland was a champion of free trade, while Benjamin Harrison campaigned on enacting (and indeed enacted) one of the highest US tariffs of all time, largely designed to protect US industry against British competition. However the letter was a fraud drafted by a Harrison supporter.

It is said that the letter most importantly swung the vote in the state of New York, which at the time was one of the key swing states in US presidential elections. Irish immigrants - a huge voting block comparable perhaps to Latino immigrants today - were said to have abandoned Cleveland in droves, despite usually voting for the Democratic Party whose nominee Cleveland was.

I believe the modern view among historians is that the Murchison Letter did not in fact change the electoral outcome that had already been determined by other factors. But some say historians set out to disprove the theses of the past to ensure that they still have jobs, not because they are wrong.

The letter did cause a strain on Anglo-American relationships. The ambassador of Great Britain to the U.S. in 1888 was Sir Lionel Sackville-West. Sir Lionel had been on the scene for most of the decade in the U.S. capital (his daughter Victoria had been a close friend to Cleveland's predecessor Chester Arthur - so that some thought Arthur, a widower, would marry Victoria), and when he got the letter, instead of checking it out or being non-committal, he wrote that Cleveland was the more pro-British of the two candidates (this did not sit well, supposedly, with the Irish-American community in New York City and the country). Cleveland was so angry at this faux-pas of Sir Lionel he gave the diplomat his papers and sent him back home. Lord Salisbury was furious at this high-handedness by Cleveland, and refused to appoint any ambassador to the U.S. until after the results of the national election. So it was Benjamin Harrison who received the next British ambassador in 1889.

Jeff

[GUT]

Forgot one Australia celebrated 100 years of European Settlement.

[ChrisGeorge]

Blizzard of 1888.



West 10th Street, Manhattan, New York City



Leland Opera House, Albany, New York State



Brooklyn Bridge, New York City